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The Day My Grandfather Was a Hero

In October 1944, a thirteen-year-old girl arrives in a tiny farming community in Lower Austria, at some distance from the main theatre of war. She remembers very little about how she got there, it seems she has suffered trauma from bombardment. One night a few months later, a young, emaciated Russian appears, a deserter from forced labour in the east. He has nothing with him but a canvas roll, which he guards like a hawk. Their burgeoning friendship is abruptly interrupted by the arrival of a group of Wehrmacht soldiers in retreat, who commandeer the farm.

Paulus Hochgatterer’s intensely atmospheric, resonant novel is like a painting in itself, a beautiful observation of small shifts from apathy in a community not directly affected by the war, but exhausted by it nonetheless; individual acts of moral bravery which to some extent have the power to change the course of history.

Longlisted for the Austrian Book Prize 2017, this subtle, evocative novella will appeal to readers of Hubert Mingarelli’s A MEAL IN WINTER and Jenny Erpenbeck’s THE END OF DAYS.

Reviews

Hochgatterer's great art is to transform psychological confusion into a language of extreme clarity . . . This Austrian author writes with a sparseness that builds to a powerful crescendo before the dramatic finale.

Paul Jandl, Neue Zürcher Zeitung

The final days have been reported, filmed, sung and documented a hundred times, but rarely told as vividly as in Paulus Hochgatterer's new book . . . he narrates the last act of a drama in which life and future plans were reshuffled. This could be dismissed as hubris, were Hochgatterer not such a good writer.

Profil

Lean, incredibly vivid sentences ... the tension never lets up

Ulrich Weinzierl, Die Welt

His novels unleash a force that is rarely felt in contemporary German-language literature

Rainer Moritz, Die Presse

Austria's answer to David Lynch

Hubert Winkerls, 3sat Kulturzeit

His work conveys a heightened awareness of the fragility of what keeps our innermost souls in check

Felicitas von Lovenberg, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Paulus Hochgatterer writes about life and the chasms that swallow you when you take the wrong path